This invention relates to and solves problems in the field of stringed musical instruments and the means of affixing and adjusting the strings by a bridge and tailpiece or combination of the two.
Strings are typically attached to the head of the instrument by a tuning mechanism providing the means to adjust the tension and musical pitch of that string. At the other end, contact with the body by the string is by a bridge and tailpiece, or a combination bridge/tailpiece. The bridge usually has a mechanical means of varying the length of the strings, or built into its geometry will be a shape giving each string a predetermined length, or compensation (intonation).
Compensation is an accounting of several phenomena causing the tension and pitch of strings to rise or “sharpen”:                1. The string has a stiffness related to the elasticity of the material, manner of construction, and cross-sectional diameter. This stiffness makes the vibrating length of the string shorter than the distance separating the two points contacting the string. The stiffness impedes vibration near a point of contact.        2. The bridge holds the string at a distance above the fingerboard or fretboard to provide a clearance for the vibrating string and to accommodate a musician's hand strength and desired feel, hence the term “action” used to describe string height. Depressing a string to contact a fingerboard or fretboard is known in music as making a “stop”. Because the string must be deformed from a straight line in its unstopped state to an obtuse angle with its vertex at the stop, a musician lengthens the string in making a stop. This lengthening strain causes the tension to rise, along with the musical pitch going sharp.        3. A string put into vigorous vibration describes a wider arc than one receiving less actuating energy, and makes that wider arc by stretching, again causing a sharpening of the musical pitch. Many musicians have a distinctive touch when attacking a note; they often favor a particular range of energy.        
These sharpening effects require that strings be longer than mathematical theories of musical scales would indicate. Each effect has a wide range in the real world and in the bridge lays the opportunity to offer a degree of adjustment that can keep any musician and any string in tune. There are many bridges that provide a plurality of saddles and pluralities of mechanisms for their adjustment (Quan U.S. Pat. No. 4,069,773). Along with the individually adjustable saddles, modern bridges are mounted to the body with a plurality of mechanical fasteners. These bridge's many parts offer a poorer transmission of acoustical waves, squandering and muddying musical timbre.
Musical instrument bridges do not only establish a string length. They are also the primary pathways for acoustical energy from the string to the instrument's body. The materials and construction of a bridge can be heard in the instrument's voice, or “timbre” that the bridge is attached to. The best sounding bridges are those made of as few pieces possible utilizing the best materials (generally the best materials for transmission of sound are lightweight and hard). Because these bridges are solid, they also offer no further adjustment than that built into the geometry of the bridge. The bridge depicted in U.S. Pat. No. 2,714,326 is the archetypical design of prior art, and while the intonation is not adjustable it is one of the most pure sounding bridges possible.
The acoustic guitar usually has a hardwood bridge glued to the front of the body with a slot cut into it. In that slot is placed a sliver of bone, ivory, plastic or similar natural or artificial material as the saddle, often underneath said saddle is placed a transducer for converting the mechanical vibration originated by the strings to an electrical vibration (U.S. Pat. No. 6,677,514.) The saddle is usually thick enough to be angled and carved in a way to positively affect a string's intonation, and, to a degree limited by the bridge, adjusted for action. There is a body of prior art (U.S. Pat. No. 4,768,414) dedicated to bringing individually adjustable saddles to the slotted acoustic guitar bridge.